[Wurdan]

For better or worse a gigantic portion of people who make their livelihoods on the internet are fully dependent on closed source platforms. Do you think people who sell things on Shopify or Etsy are any more able to scrutinize the systems they depend on to make a living?

[danielheath]

You can sell on Shopify _and_ Etsy and make money on both (as long as you don’t cross Mastercard/Visa).

Turning a profit on video outside YouTube is a far more difficult undertaking.

My point: This problem is far worse when a monopoly is involved.

[Wurdan]

So what's your suggestion for how YouTube could be doing better here?

Especially in the scenario that (as the top level comment in this thread suggests) YouTube didn't actually make any changes and the reason the views dropped is because EasyList added an entry to their privacy filter. Should YouTube have recognized that they're in a quasi-monopoly position as you suggest, done the research to identify EasyList as the culprit behind the view metric drop, and then released a change to their client to add a new endpoint which isn't blocked by EasyList?

We don't know that the EasyList theory is what's really going on here, but if you're going to tar YouTube/Google over this ordeal, then I think you have some responsibility for suggesting how they could have done better.

[danielheath]

YouTube can’t “do better”; the problem is the monopoly (their moat is too damn wide).